Hexed release date and cast: Hailee Steinfeld gets expelled and gets magic
Disney Animation's Thanksgiving swing has a witch realm, Jodie Foster's first animated villain — and a three-eyed green cat voiced by Walton Goggins, which is not a sentence we made up.
Hexed lands in US theaters November 25), claiming Disney's traditional Thanksgiving slot as Walt Disney Animation's 65th feature. The setup is right there in the premise: Billie Doe, an impulsive teenager freshly expelled from school and — in the studio's words — feeling miscast in her own life, accidentally unleashes magical abilities that yank her out of suburbia and into Hexe, a hidden realm of witches where her family's secrets have been waiting. Her cautious mother Alice comes along, which turns a standard chosen-one story into a mother-daughter road trip through the occult.
Co-director Fawn Veerasunthorn frames it as a self-discovery engine with the brakes cut:
"It takes leaving her normal world behind and entering a hidden world of wild, unhinged magic to begin to understand herself."
The cast is doing bits
- Hailee Steinfeld as Billie — a Disney Animation lead at last, slotting neatly between Spider-Verse and Arcane on her animation résumé
- Rashida Jones as Alice, the mom who did not sign up for a witch realm
- Jodie Foster as Queen Celeste, the devious ruler of the witches — her first animated Disney role ever, a wild first to still have available at two Oscars deep
- Walton Goggins as Beef Roger Crumbchuck, a three-eyed green cat, continuing Goggins' campaign to accept only the most Goggins-coded roles in existence
- Tracey Ullman as Ms. Quill, an enchanted quill pen, and Stephen Fry as Elias Quire, a talking magical journal — office supplies with SAG cards
The long road to Hexe
The film was unveiled at Destination D23 in August 2025 by animation chief Jared Bush, and the version arriving in November isn't the one Disney started with: the original concept centered on "an awkward teenage boy") before the story was rebuilt around Billie, and the directing team shuffled along the way — Fawn Veerasunthorn (Wish) and Jason Hand now lead, with Josie Trinidad co-directing. Hand pitches the destination as the whole point:
"Hexe is a place where Billie begins to feel seen for the first time in her life."
Screenings come with a bonus: Lilo & Scratch, a new Lilo & Stitch short, runs ahead of the feature. The trailer is already out; the expulsion-to-empowerment pipeline opens the day before Thanksgiving.
Previously we wrote: ESPN Jeopardy season 2 renewed — and the contestants this time are regular sports fans: how to apply for a shot at $300,000
